The present disclosure relates to computer systems, and in particular to controlling deployment of resources across a portfolio of distributed computing systems.
In existing cloud and other distributed computer systems (e.g., data centers), a services creator or system operator generally should know in advance which applications (or types of applications) will be deployed and estimate the numbers and types of physical host machines and other infrastructure that needs to be deployed in the system to support processing of the applications. The capacity of the system can be changed by increasing or decreasing the numbers or types of physical host machines and other infrastructure. During operation, a load balancer can operate to direct requests from user electronic devices to particular ones of the physical host machines for processing by associated applications. Although load balancers can provide better balancing of infrastructure utilization, they may not sufficiently improve the efficiency with which infrastructure is deployed and used, which can have a substantial effect on cost in view of the potential large number of physical host machines and other infrastructure that can be deployed in some distributed computer systems.
Distributed computer systems can include infrastructure that resides in geographically dispersed clusters, such as in data center facilities that are located in different counties, states, or countries. Determining where to deploy or relocate workload among a portfolio of data center facilities can be complicated by the need to adequately consider numerous different factors, such as available capacities of the facility infrastructure resources, utilization of the facility infrastructure resources, costs of the facility infrastructure resources, etc. Substantial differences existing between the functions, operations, capabilities, scalability, etc. of the various facility infrastructure resources has prevented their effective combined analysis in a way that would facilitate decisions regarding the deployment or relocation of resources and workload among a portfolio of available data center facilities.